When Andrew Evans set out to revamp his seaside hotel at
Saundersfoot in west Wales, he wanted to play it by the book. Aware that there
were new laws about asbestos, he commissioned a survey from an asbestos removal
contractor licensed by the Health and Safety Executive. The contractor reported
that an analysis by an officially-accredited laboratory showed that artex paint
in the bedrooms contained asbestos. To remove the artex would cost £24,000, with
similar costs for redecoration.

Happily for Mr Evans, his architect recommended a second opinion.
An independent survey and analysis showed that the artex contained not a trace
of asbestos, and that removal was wholly unnecessary.

In thus saving £50,000, Mr Evans has proved more fortunate than
many other people who own properties containing artex - the total number of
which runs into millions. Artex, a paint-like coating very widely used between
the 1950s and 1970s, often but not always contains minute traces of white
asbestos. This was why in 1999, on the advice of the Asbestos Removal
Contractors Association (ARCA), the HSE ruled that it could be handled only by
licensed contractors - though independent tests have consistently shown that no
asbestos fibres can be released from artex and that it poses no risk to
health.

As a result of the HSE's decision, contractors can now make
hundreds of millions of pounds a year by charging exorbitant sums to remove an
entirely harmless substance. Another consequence of the HSE's policy is that
countless homeowners are being told by surveyors, estate agents and building
societies that their homes have lost up to a fifth of their value, or even that
they are unsaleable, unless the artex is removed by a licensed contractor, at
huge cost.

One of the few voices raised in protest against this shameless
exploitation is that of Asbestos Watchdog. This expert body was set up a year
ago to advise members of the public, following this column's exposure of the
confusion and hysteria that has been spread by the HSE - partly through its
ignorant persistence in portraying all forms of asbestos as potential killers,
and especially through its extraordinary blunder of including artex in the
regulations.

It was Asbestos Watchdog that Mr Evans's architect called in, and
that ended up saving him £50,000. Of the 5,000 enquiries it has received this
year (through its website, www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk), a third related to artex, and
many came from people who had been told that its presence would knock up to
£50,000 off the value of their homes.

Those who are most afflicted by the HSE regulations, however, are
the managers of the seven million properties in Britain's social housing stock -
for example, Sian Howells of the Merthyr Tydfil housing association. "We were
told," she says, "we must survey each of our 1,000 properties, taking five
samples from each room, at a cost of up to £48 for each sample. With laboratory
tests and the costs of removal, the total bill would be absolutely
prohibitive."

As I reported last year, the bill just for surveying and sampling
Britain's social housing stock has been estimated at £2 billion. And all this
arises from a blunder that the HSE was steered into, at least in part, by ARCA,
which had much to gain by it, and which is heavily represented on the Asbestos
Liaison Group that advised the HSE on its policy.

Privately, senior officials of the HSE concede that they may have
made a mistake. In 2003 Bill McDonald, the head of asbestos policy, promised
that the HSE would consider removing artex from the regulations. In May this
year I was assured that its laboratory was carrying out tests, and that "later
this year" it would be "consulting". Last week the HSE told me that its tests,
with the aid of ARCA members, are still continuing. Meanwhile one of the
greatest scams of our time continues.

Two weeks ago I reported on the bizarre crisis facing a firm in
Oswestry, Shropshire, run by the celebrated Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand.
Until last year he and his 90 employees were the world leaders in making
aerostats, giant tethered balloons, costing £500,000 each, which can carry 30
people 500 feet up into the air.

Since September 2003 Mr Lindstrand has lost millions of pounds'
worth of orders thanks to a ludicrous red-tape anomaly which arose when the
power to certify aircraft was taken over from national governments by the new
European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Under UK law, Mr Lindstrand's aerostats
had not been certified as "aircraft" but, because they are tethered to the
ground, as "fairground rides". Because the almost identical machines made by his
only rival, Aerophile, a Franco-German company, were designated under national
law as "aircraft", EASA was happy for them to continue to be sold under their
existing certification.

But because Mr Lindstrand's products now required to be
re-certified from scratch, and EASA as yet had no standard for aerostats, they
could no longer be legally sold in Britain or anywhere in the EU, even though
they had previously been successfully sold all over the world. This left
Aerophile with a monopoly of the market.

Although in September 2003 Mr Lindstrand's MP, Owen Paterson,
raised the matter in the Commons and with ministers, and both he and I received
solemn assurance that the matter would very soon be resolved, nothing happened.
Mr Lindstrand lost three orders worth £1.5 million, and otentially several more,
and had to start laying off his workforce.

Thirteen months later, despite interminable frustrating exchanges
with the CAA, he was still no further forward. Matters were not helped by the
sight of his rival being free to sell its aerostats in Britain, even though they
use a type of winch, certified in France, which has several times caused safety
problems.

Last week, after I had again reported on this crazy situation,
and Mr Paterson had simultaneously put down a barrage of parliamentary questions
and implored the minister, Charlotte Atkins, to intervene, two senior CAA
officials arrived in Oswestry, seemingly determined to resolve the impasse after
months of inaction.

They asked for all the information Mr Lindstrand had previously
provided to be submitted again, in a new format. They were confident that,
within weeks, a solution could be found, enabling Lindstrand Balloons to resume
its original position as the world's leading maker of aerostats. Mr Paterson and
I will continue to follow this story closely.

One day last year, Mr James, a trading standards official of
Torbay council in Devon walked into Dennis Webb's fruit shop. When he saw that,
despite a previous warning, Mr Webb was still using scales that measured only in
pounds and ounces, Mr James produced a hammer and a metal punch with which,
according to Mr Webb, he struck the scales so hard as to render them
unusable.

In May this year, when John Gardner of the British Weights and
Measures Association heard about this, he wrote to the council asking what Mr
James's legal authority was for sabotaging the scales. Torbay promised to look
into it. Having heard no more, despite two further letters, Mr Gardner lodged an
official complaint in September. Again he was promised that the matter would be
looked into. The only further response was a form sent to Mr Webb asking him to
make a complaint under the Data Protection Act.

Last week when I also asked Torbay what its legal authority was
for wrecking Mr Webb's scales, I was told that, although the council's officer
had "taken action to take the scales out of use", "this action did not damage
the scales".

However, the council added, the failure to give an earlier
response was "now the subject of a formal internal investigation" and "where
deficiencies in our procedures are identified corrective action will be taken to
ensure that such matters do not recur".

There is encouraging news for Tony Blair in his efforts to sell
the EU constitution to the British people - efforts that will face their final
test in a referendum likely to be held in March 2006. The Chinese foreign
ministry has issued a statement praising the part the constitution will play in
bringing about a "unified and integrated European Union". China fully supports
the EU's "political unification", giving "new opportunities for the further
development of China-EU relations". How cheered Mr Blair and his EU friends must
be to win as an ally such a stalwart champion of democracy as the People's
Republic of China.